Every other year the EuChemS Division of History of Chemistry organises an international conference on the history of chemistry (ICHC). The ICHCs are the main international conferences in the field and are open to colleagues from all over the world. The general aim of the conferences organised by the Division is to facilitate communication between historically interested chemists, museum curators, science educators and historians of chemistry, and to gather the community on a regular basis. 

The 15th International Conference on the History of Chemistry (15ICHC) will take place from 8th to 12th of June, 2027  and will be hosted by the University of Bologna. 

The Conference is organised by EuChemS Division of History of Chemistry and the Department of Philosophy of the University of Bologna in collaboration with Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, the Società Chimica Italiana and the Gruppo Nazionale di Fondamenti e Storia della Chimica. 

Bologna is one of the leading centres for the study of the history of science in Italy, and the city’s own scientific tradition is both longstanding and distinguished. From the later Middle Ages onwards it played a central part in the development of European medicine, natural philosophy, mathematics and astronomy, and not least of chemistry.
Early in the seventeenth century Vincenzo Casciarolo, a Bolognese shoemaker with a taste for alchemy, found on Monte Paderno a heavy stone which, once calcined, went on glowing in the dark after it had been exposed to light. The “Bologna stone”, a native barium sulphate, caused a sensation among the learned of Europe and became the first luminescent substance to be studied systematically; Fortunio Liceti devoted a whole treatise to it, the Litheosphorus of 1640.
In 1711 Luigi Ferdinando Marsili founded the Istituto delle Scienze, which gave experimental research in Bologna a permanent home, and in 1737 the University established its first chair of chemistry. Its holder, Jacopo Bartolomeo Beccari, soon distinguished himself by a number of discoveries, the most important being the nutritional properties of gluten. Towards the end of the century physicians and naturalists such as Luigi Galvani brought chemistry into their research, and the tradition never faded. In the nineteenth century Francesco Selmi pioneered the study of colloids, and Giacomo Ciamician made Bologna a centre of photochemistry; in 1912 he foresaw an industry powered by sunlight.

The conference programme will include scientific sessions, roundtables, keynote lectures, a poster session, the Division of the History of Chemistry business meeting, as well as social events such as a welcome reception, guided tours, and a conference dinner.

LOCAL ORGANISER: Department of Philosophy, University of Bologna. In collaboration with the Gruppo Nazionale di Fondamenti e Storia della Chimica and the Società Chimica Italiana.

INTERNATIONAL ORGANISER: Division of History of Chemistry of the European Chemical Society

CONFERENCE THEME: The Chemistry of Food and Spirits

read the call for papers

Detailed information here